Thoughts on Homefront

Homefront is an encapsulation of the problems that plague many video
games. While it has the polish and technical prowess of a top of the
line, AAA gaming experience, it falls totally flat due to its inept
conception.

The single player campaign finds the player's character, an American
pilot, captive to the Koreans, who have invaded and conquered much of
the United States in Homefront's near-future setting. Soon, however, he
teams up with a resistance group, with whom the player endeavors to
throw a wrench into the Koreans' plans by unleashing a whole lot of
violence. As implausible as the premise sounds, that is not the game's
problem.

Nor are the graphics. The game is powered by the Unreal Engine 3, and
the developers have managed to adapt it to beautifully render some
lovely, open, outdoor landscapes. Because the game centers around a
American resistance movement, the setting is is a battered version of
suburbia. The battlegrounds are neighborhood streets, the aisles of
large abandoned stores, and the open spaces of parking lots and sports
fields. It is a competent representation of the premise the story puts
forward.

The control and mechanics work adequately as well. The gunplay holds it
own with titles like Call of Duty, and there is no shortage of weapons
with which to experiment.

So why does the single player campaign fail so totally? The answer lies
in the story and how the gameplay was used to convey that narrative.
These choices are at odds with the game's strengths. The appeal of the
implausible premise and setting is the novelty of fighting for a world
that attempts to be the some one that the player lives in. One gets to
see the destroyed suburbia, and those fighting alongside you are normal,
scared people like yourself. A game that makes the most of these
strengths would allow the player opportunities for exploration of the
environment, perhaps by providing multiple possible routes to achieve
objectives. Such a game would develop the characters; their back stories
would provide motive for the fighting while exploring how terrible
situations change people. The prejudicial tension between Americans of
Western European descent compared to those of East Asian descent given
the invasion of Koreans could provide fascinating plot points to be
explored.

Homefront, however, does none of these things. The gameplay is linear to
a fault. There is frequently one path forward, and that path is always
highly scripted in both time and space. You cannot climb a ladder or
crawl through a hole until the characters with you go first, and, even
then, you will simply press a key that tells the game to do the crawling
or climbing for you. You cannot explore the neighborhoods that you must
fight through. Only one path forward will be allowed, so there will be
no opportunity to look in abandoned houses, stores, or other scenery. It
is all merely a backdrop. The other characters, too, are merely a
backdrop; though they fight alongside you, they are shallow, undeveloped
shells of characters. The main group consists of a tough black guy, a
scared woman, and a featureless, techy Asian. Each is an empty
stereotype that is present only as a nod to diversity, and none
contributes to the story. With no characters to care about, a world that
feels tiny despite its large size, and no freedom to accomplish
anything, it is very hard to care much about the game as a whole. As a
result, there's not too much fun to be had, and there's nothing
interesting to think about, either.

How about the multiplayer? It is highly
derivative of the Battlefield series. The maps are pretty decent, and
the different game types are standard of the genre. Homefront mixes
things up a bit with the introduction of "Battle Points." These points
are earned by doing things like killing enemies or achieving objectives.
Then they can be spent on vehicles (tanks, trucks, etc), accessories
(flak jacket, RPG, etc), or special abilities (like deploying a drone).
This adds a touch of new strategy, but in practice it doesn't work too
differently from just spawning the items at intervals. The vehicles seem
underpowered in this game, and I think much of that issue arises from
the non-destructible environment. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, for
example, a tank can force it's way through a flimsy wall or fence; in
Homefront, on the other hand, the tank can do nothing to a flimsy fence
and is thus easily trapped. This renders the use of vehicles fairly
uninteresting. As a whole, the multiplayer can be enjoyable, but it is
clearly inferior to several other games.

As a whole, there is much to learn from Homefront. Despite its high
production values, it makes numerous mistakes in its construction of
gameplay mechanics and its botched attempt to create an interesting
narrative. Further, it has no idea how to combine that narrative with
those mechanics, so each fails completely and separately. One can have
some fun with Homefront, so perhaps players that simply want a different
FPS to play will find enjoyment. But, ultimately, it's a shallow and
unfullfilling experience.

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On this website you can find various ramblings on video games. I attempt to take a more critical approach to reviews and analysis. Numerous labels on posts allow further refinement of review searches by developer, genre, etc.